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Critical strike
This article is about physical critical strikes only. For magical critical strikes, see spell critical strike. Critical strike, often abbreviated as "crit", refers to 100% bonus physical damage (twice your normal damage) that occurs as a result of an attack made with melee or ranged weapons. The chance to critical strike increases by 1% per 23.6 critical strike rating points at level 70 and 14 critical strike rating points at level 60. The chance to critical strike can be viewed in the character pane under melee stats and is affected by Agility, critical strike rating and talents. Some classes have talents that increase the amount of bonus damage for critical strikes. Attacks made by mobs can not result in a blocked critical strike, but this can result on a player attack. It can also be viewed by opening the spell book and mousing over the "Attack" ability. Notable about critical strikes is that any non-spell attack on a sitting target will always result with a critical hit. Attack Rating and Defense Mobs which are the same level as you always have a 5% chance to crit. A mob or players crit chance can be modified by the difference between the attackers effective Attack Rating and the Defense of the target. The effective attack rating is normally the skill with the currently equipped weapon (WS = Weapon Skill). When attacking mobs, each point of AR above player level * 5 will increase chance to crit higher level enemies by 0.1%, however this effect most likely caps at mob level * 5. This table assumes a player attacking either a mob or another player: Effect of increased crit or hit chance Both increased hit and crit chance have a kind of "diminishing returns" mechanic built in. A 1% increase of either stat will not increase the total damage output by 1%, but usually by a little less. Consider the following Attack table: #2% base miss #5% dodge #5% parry #5% block #25% crit Damage = BaseDamage * ((1.00 - 0.02 - 0.05 - 0.05 - 0.05 - 0.25) + 2 * 0.25) = BaseDamage * 1.08 (With 0% crit we'd do 83% of BaseDamage) Now the same calculation with 26% crit chance: Damage = BaseDamage * ((1.00 - 0.02 - 0.05 - 0.05 - 0.05 - 0.26) + 2 * 0.26) = BaseDamage * 1.09 We increased the total damage output by 1% of the base damage. Since the total output is more than 100% of that base damage, the actual increase in total damage output is "only" 0.93%. If the total output is significantly greater than the base damage, this percentage will be smaller, if the total output is below the base damage, the resulting increase will even be higher than 1%. What's better, +to hit or +crit? In principle they are equal. Which is better depends on circumstances. An increase in hit rate will usually yield a constant level of damage, whereas a high crit chance gives a spiky, more random damage distribution over time. An important factor is whether there are procs related to either hits or critical hits. Also, both ratings have caps. To hit can only be used to counter the base chance to miss (5% for one-hand users without any off-hand weapon, 9% for two-handers and 24% for dualwielders), whereas the crit chance cannot become higher than the hit chance. If a dualwielder attacks a target with a high chance to dodge or parry the attacker can lose crit chance because the attack table is full. Enhancers Equipment which increases critical hit rate stacks together, so it is possible to achieve relatively high critical hit rates (20% are easily possible with pre-Karazhan gear). Elixirs *Elixir of Major Agility *Elixir of the Mongoose Enchantments *Greater Inscription of Vengeance *Greater Inscription of the Blade *Inscription of the Blade *Nethercobra Leg Armor *Cobrahide Leg Armor *Might of the Scourge *Stabilized Eternium Scope Gems Racial abilities Some races have racial abilities which increase the critical strike chance with certain weapons by 1%: * Dwarf: Gun Specialization * Troll: Bow and Thrown Specialization * Orc: Axe Specialization :Prior to Patch 2.3.0, these racial abilities affected weapon skill instead. See also *Combat *Combat rating system *Spell critical strike *Agility Category:Game Terms Category:Combat Category:Attributes Category:Formulas and Game Mechanics